he argues, even when it fails of its
immediate aim; and even in failure the inherited life of the race is
enlarged.

No great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.
No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,
The undivided will to seek the good:
'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings
A human music from the indifferent air.
The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!--
We feed the high tradition of the world,
And leave our spirit in our children's breasts.

George Eliot never goes so far as to say that man may, by virtue of his
inward life, rise superior to all circumstances, and maintain the
inviolable sanctity of his own moral nature. She does not forget that
defeat is often the surest victory, that moral faithfulness may lead to
disgrace and death; but even in these cases it is for the sake of the race
we are to be faithful. The inward victory, the triumph of the soul in
unsullied purity and serenity, she does not dwell upon; and it may be
doubted if she fully recognized such a moral result. Her mind is so
occupied with the social results of conduct as to overlook the individual
victories which life ever brings to those who are faithful unto death.
George Eliot has put her theory of morality into the mouth of Guildenstern,
one of the characters in "A College Breakfast Party."

Where get, you say, a binding law, a rule
Enforced by sanction, an Ideal throned
With thunder in its hand? I answer, there
Whence every faith and rule has drawn its force
Since human consciousness awaking owned
An Outward, whose unconquerable sway
Resisted first and then subdued desire
By pressure of the dire impossible
Urging to possible ends the active soul
And shaping so its terror and its love.
Why, you have said it--threats and promises
Depend on each man's sentence for their force:
All sacred rules, imagined or revealed,
Can have no form or potency apart
From the percipient and emotive mind.
God, duty, love, submission, fellowship,
Must first be framed in man, as music is,
Before they live outside him as a law.
And still they grow and shape themselves anew,
With fuller concentration in their life
Of inward and of outward energies
Blending to make the last result called Man,
Which means, not this or that philosopher
Looking through beauty into blankness, not
The swindler who has sent his fruitfu